One medium-sized pomegranate contains one gram of dietary fiber. This is approximately 4 percent of the recommended daily value of dietary fiber. Dietary fiber improves your digestive health by preventing constipation, indigestion, gas, etc. It promotes smooth and easy digestion of the ingested food and in turn helps increase absorption of nutrients in the digestive tract. Thus, it improves your overall health.

Excerpt from http://www.azcentral.com/style/hfe/food/articles/2011/03/30/20110330gluten-free-food-can-be-delicious.html by Karen Fernau – Mar. 30, 2011

Giving up bread, pasta, cookies and fried chicken can make for joyless eating. Add Friday nights without pepperoni pizza and beer, and you’re facing a grim culinary life sentence.

These are the initial fears of those who become ill from eating wheat and other gluten-based grains. Yet, breakfast without bagels is survivable.

“People come to me daily in tears, fearing that they will feel deprived for the rest of their lives. I assure them that you learn to live gluten-free like you would eat an elephant – one bite at a time,” said Lucia Schnitzer, co-owner with her husband, Ken, of Luci’s Healthy Marketplace, a mid-Phoenix mecca for gluten-free products.

As an evangelist for gluten-free eating, Schnitzer urges customers who have the intolerance to become food detectives, searching for the hidden offender in such unlikely places as salad dressings, herbal teas, meats, potato chips and any product whose label says “natural flavors” have been added.

Next, she urges them to eat without feeling deprived by taking advantage of the avalanche of new products that make it possible for those with an intolerance to gluten or who have the more serious celiac disease to eat the types of foods they were previously forced to avoid. Celiac disease is a genetic autoimmune disorder caused by eating the gluten protein in wheat and other grains, such as barley, rye and oats.

Beef
Angus_Beef
Kobe Beef
Wagyu Beef
Cuts of Meat
Chicken
Duck
Lamb
Pork
Quail
Turkey
Veal
Venison

About Nuts:
There is evidence that nuts have been around feeding us and our ancient ancestors since prehistoric times. The oldest evidence are some walnut remains which were found in Iraq and are thought to be over 50,000 years old!

The almond dates back to 3100-1100 BC in the region around Turkey, Cyprus and Greece. By the way, did you know that almonds are related to peaches? Pine nuts have been providing powerful nutrition to those living in the ‘Great Basin’ region of the US for many thousands of years.   pistachio is known savored for thousands of years, dating back to 7000 years or so to the Middle East. Long used along with almonds by travelers because of the compact, but potent nutritional value, this nut inspired some interesting legends, including the one that says the Queen of Sheba declared it an exclusively ‘royal’ food forbidding commoners to grow and eat it.

Monosodium glutamate, sodium glutamate, flavour enhancer 621 EU food additive code: E621. HS code: 29224220. (IUPAC names: 2-aminopentanedioic acid, 2-aminoglutaric acid, 1-aminopropane-1,3-dicarboxylic acid), commonly known as MSG, Ajinomoto or Vetsin, is a sodium salt of glutamic acid.

MSG is a food additive, popularly marketed as a “flavour enhancer” in Chinese cuisine /cooking. It was discovered and patented in 1909 by Ajinomoto Corporation in Japan. In its pure form, it appears as a white crystalline powder; when dissolved in water (or saliva) it rapidly dissociates into free sodium and glutamate ions (glutamate is the anionic form of glutamic acid, a naturally occurring amino acid).

MSG stimulates specific receptors located in taste buds such as the amino acid receptor T1R1/T1R3 or other glutamate receptors like the metabotropic receptors (mGluR4 and mGluR1) which induce the taste known as umami, one of the five basic tastes (the word umami is a loanword from Japanese; it is also referred to as “savory” or “meaty”).

The umami taste may have evolved to help animals ingest food that have high protein content and is of significant importance to the food industry because of its flavor enhancement properties.

Natural Occurence

Glutamate itself is a widespread amino acid: it is found naturally in human bodies and in protein-containing foods, such as peas, mushrooms, seaweed, tomatoes, fermented soy products, yeast extracts, nuts, legumes, meats and most dairy products. Some of the glutamate in foods is in a “free” form; and only this free form of glutamate can enhance the flavor of foods. Part of the flavour-enhancing effect of tomatoes, certain cheeses, and fermented or hydrolyzed protein products (such as soy sauce and soy bean paste) is therefore due to the presence of free glutamate. Asian cuisine originally used a natural seaweed broth, such as kelp, to bring up the umami taste in soups. Manufacturers, such as Ajinomoto, use selected strains of Micrococcus glutamicus bacteria in a bath of nutrient. The bacteria are selected for their ability to excrete glutamic acid, which is then separated from the nutrient bath, purified, and made into its sodium salt, monosodium glutamate.

Other Sources

Hydrolyzed proteins, or protein hydrolysates, are acid- or enzymatically treated proteins from certain foods. They contain salts of free amino acids, such as glutamate, at levels of 5 to 20 percent. Hydrolyzed proteins are used in the same manner as MSG in many foods, such as canned vegetables, soups, and processed meats. Another source of MSG is fruits, vegetables and nuts that have been sprayed with Auxigro, a growth enhancer that contains 30% glutamic acid.

Glutamate is present in a variety of protein-rich foods, and particularly abundant in aged cheese.

Discovery

Despite its ubiquity in common food products, the flavour contributions made by glutamate and other amino acids were only scientifically identified early in the twentieth century. In 1907, Japanese researcher Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University identified brown crystals left behind after the evaporation of a large amount of kombu broth as glutamic acid. These crystals, when tasted, reproduced the ineffable but undeniable flavour he detected in many foods, most especially in seaweed. Professor Ikeda termed this flavour “umami.” He then patented a method of mass-producing a crystalline form of glutamic acid, MSG. [1]

Commercialization

The Ajinomoto (???) company was formed to manufacture and market MSG in Japan; the name ‘Ajinomoto’ means “essence of taste”. It was introduced to the United States in 1947 as Ac’cent flavor enhancer. Modern commercial MSG is produced by fermentation [2] of starch, sugar beets, sugar cane, or molasses. About 1.5 million metric tons were sold in 2001, with 4% annual growth expected. [3] MSG is used commercially as a flavour enhancer, and is added as an ingredient to many snack foods, frozen dinners, and instant meals such as the seasoning mixtures for instant noodles.

Scientific review

In 1959, FDA classified MSG as a “generally recognized as safe”, or GRAS, substance. This action stemmed from the 1958 Food Additives Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which required premarket approval for new food additives and led FDA to promulgate regulations listing substances, such as MSG, which have a history of safe use or are otherwise GRAS. Since 1970, FDA has sponsored extensive reviews on the safety of MSG, other glutamates and hydrolyzed proteins, as part of an ongoing review of safety data on GRAS substances used in processed foods. One such review was by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Select Committee on GRAS Substances. In 1980, the committee concluded that MSG was safe at current levels of use but recommended additional evaluation to determine MSG’s safety at significantly higher levels of consumption. Additional reports attempted to look at this. In 1986, FDA’s Advisory Committee on Hypersensitivity to Food Constituents concluded that MSG poses no threat to the general public but that reactions of brief duration might occur in some people. Other reports gave similar findings:

A 1991 report by the European Community’s (EC) Scientific Committee for Foods reaffirmed MSG’s safety and classified its “acceptable daily intake” as “not specified”, the most favorable designation for a food ingredient. In addition, the EC Committee said, “Infants, including prematures, have been shown to metabolize glutamate as efficiently as adults and therefore do not display any special susceptibility to elevated oral intakes of glutamate.” A 1992 report from the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association stated that glutamate in any form has not been shown to be a “significant health hazard”. Also, the 1987 Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization have placed MSG in the safest category of food ingredients.

Scientific knowledge about how the body metabolizes glutamate developed rapidly during the 1980s. Studies showed that glutamate in the body plays an important role in normal functioning of the nervous system. Questions then arose on the role glutamate in food plays in these functions and whether or not glutamate in food contributes to certain neurological diseases.

MSG intolerance

There have been numerous studies of allergies and/or sensitivities to MSG, attributed to the free glutamic acid component, which has been blamed for causing a wide variety of physical symptoms such as migraines, nausea, digestive upsets, bad dreams, disturbed sleep, drowsiness, heart palpitations, hair loss, asthma, anaphylactic shock, rapidly increasing diabetes, and many other complaints. “Chinese restaurant syndrome” is often used as an example of the symptoms purported to be caused by MSG. Prompted by continuing public interest and a flurry of glutamate-related studies in the late 1980s, FDA contracted with FASEB in 1992 to review the available scientific data. The agency asked FASEB to address 18 questions dealing with: the possible role of MSG in eliciting MSG symptom complex the possible role of dietary glutamates in forming brain lesions and damaging nerve cells in humans underlying conditions that may predispose a person to adverse effects from MSG the amount consumed and other factors that may affect a person’s response to MSG the quality of scientific data and previous safety reviews. FASEB held a two-day meeting and convened an expert panel that thoroughly reviewed all the available scientific literature on this issue. FASEB completed the final report, over 350 pages long, and delivered it to FDA on July 31, 1995. While not a new study, the report offers a new safety assessment based on the most comprehensive existing evaluation to date of glutamate safety. Among the report’s key findings: An unknown percentage of the population may react to MSG and develop MSG symptom complex, a condition characterized by one or more of the following symptoms: burning sensation in the back of the neck, forearms and chest numbness in the back of the neck, radiating to the arms and back tingling, warmth and weakness in the face, temples, upper back, neck and arms facial pressure or tightness chest pain headache nausea rapid heartbeat weak pulse violent dreams bronchospasm (difficulty breathing) in MSG-intolerant people with asthma drowsiness weakness. In otherwise healthy MSG-intolerant people, the MSG symptom complex tends to occur within one hour after eating 3 grams or more of MSG on an empty stomach or without other food. A typical serving of glutamate-treated food contains less than 0.5 grams of MSG. A reaction is most likely if the MSG is eaten in a large quantity or in a liquid, such as a clear soup. Severe, poorly controlled asthma may be a predisposing medical condition for MSG symptom complex. No evidence suggests that dietary MSG or glutamate contributes to Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s chorea, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, AIDS dementia complex, or any other long-term or chronic diseases. No evidence suggests that dietary MSG causes brain lesions or damages nerve cells in humans, but there is in infant mice. The level of vitamin B6 in a person’s body plays a role in glutamate metabolism, and the possible impact of marginal B6 intake should be considered in future research.

References

• Jordan Sand, “A Short History of MSG: Good Science, Bad Science, and Taste Cultures”, Gastronomica 5:4 (Fall 2005). History of MSG and its marketing in Japan, Taiwan (under the Japanese), China, and the U.S.
• Michelle Meadows, “MSG: A Common Flavor Enhancer By Michelle Meadows” ,U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Federal Register, Dec. 4, 1992 (FR 57467)
• Federal Register, Jan. 6, 1993 (FR 2950)
• FDA Consumer, December 1993, “Food Allergies: When Eating is Risky.”
• Wikipedia

• 1oz = 28.35 gms.= 1 fl oz = 30 ml
• 1cup = 210 ml = 7 fl oz
• 1tsp= 5 ml = 1/6 fl oz
• 1 tbsp = 15 ml = 1/2 fl oz = 3 tsps

solids, measure heaped and liquids, to the brim.

Here’s an easy way to flame and serve a drink.

Difficulty Level: Hard
Time Required: 5 minutes

Here’s How:

1. Warm your glass before you begin.
2. Prepare your cocktail.
3. Pour a bit of your highest proof alcohol into a spoon.
4. Ignite using a long kitchen match.
5. Carefully pour flaming liquid into cocktail.
6. Serve immediately.
7. Extinguish before drinking.

Tips:

• Use extreme caution.
• For a fabulous sparkle effect, carefully twist and orange rind over the flame.
• Never drink while flame is still lit.

A tool known as an egg shell cutter is similar to a scissors in design and is used to snip off the top of a soft-boiled egg so it can be eaten while still in the shell. It is often made of stainless steel and is also known as an egg topper, egg snipper, or egg shell scissors.

I was always impressed with the art on Latte foam done at Barista… well! until I saw these awesome latte art. Seems, there is a restaurant in Vancouver (Caffe Artigiano on West 41st, Vancouver) where they dress up the lattes as in the pictures below. They work wonders with coffee, cream, milk , last but not the least , a little bit of imagination.

Dont miss watching the video too.

And if you wish to do a bit of more research on Latte Art, just do a search on “Latte Art” on youtube and you will find tons of videos

Gruesome but awesome !
Gruesome body parts greet customers of a bakery in Ratchaburi, Thailand. Artist and baker Kittiwat Unarrom has sculpted life-like heads, feet and hands from dough in the bakery’s kitchen and exhibits them in glass cabinets in the shop. He says his edible art lures one hundred visitors a day.